Yeah Garen is pretty versatile. I bought Udyr, unfortunately, but I hear he can be pretty versatile too. I forgot I had Alistar, just played a game with him, and remembered why I got him =) 5-2-19 lol. Alistar + Annie it was pretty unfair to stun, headbutt toward Annie, she stuns, dead. Alistar makes most lane partners into great lane partners. Plus he is a pain to try and kill, and can push towers like a beast. He is pretty one dimensional though.

I think versatile support/tank is probably the best bet for getting a higher win % in solo queue, without a duo partner.

I've played a LOT of Taric and he is a great champ, the only drawbacks Taric has are:

i) Very team dependent - if you team sucks, you are going to have a very hard time (i.e. he cannot carry)
ii) When people see him picked in team champ selection, it puts them off picking a tank nearly always
iii) He is not a strong tank (personally I think he sucks as being a main tank)

That being said there are great situations in which to use him - for example if your team is predominantly ranged you can go Defense Taric, grab a mejais (and maybe a leviathan) and be a good damage taker. Other times if you team is well balanced with a tank, melee and ranged you can go Utility and be an outright healbot.

In the unlucky event that you lock Taric and someone picks Soraka after you - you *can* loldps with him or just turn into a tanky buffbot which is what I started off doing before perfecting my play style with him.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I am leaning toward Taric currently, I think he is a good fit for me, and is not totally banned in ranked play, but often. Heimer and Shaco are no go, they are banned far too frequently in Ranked for me to invest any IP in right now.

I do enjoy Morgana as well, she can be very devastating, though I wish she had some healing but she has CC, farming/aoe damage, and even more aoe damage, and spell shield which rocks.

Sivir sounds far too boring lol. I do have Janna, and she is about a 60% win for me. When I can find one semi-competent teammate, we can usually dominate, but if not, I end up with like 12 kills and trying to carry but its miserable. Soraka is the same way, no ability to carry at all, and if your team is bad, its over.

But I do have several suggestions here to try out, and I think I will get Taric next. There are several ways to build him so he stays interesting, and can generally bring usefulness to any team.

Actually, I already have Amumu, and he is probably my best champ that I play lol. He gets a bit bland for me sometimes though, as I basically don't do a whole lot while ultimate is on CD. Ultimate up and good timing usually means we win every team fight, its almost a 100% thing if used with good timing. But outside of that, I'm more of an annoyance and occasional save with Bandage Toss but often it gets you in trouble.

As far as tanks go, Amumu is a bit squishy seeing as how he has no survival skills (Tantrum is terrible after level... ok its always terrible for survival) so I can't really go around harassing people all that much in late game. But like I said, when ultimate is ready, he is very fun and powerful. Sometimes I do set up the occasional gank with the bandage toss through the trees, which is pretty cool.

But honestly, I feel that he is a crapshoot sometimes in solo normal. I start crying, get into the pack of enemies, tantrum to get people to pay attention to me, then ult when it either stops bad spells from going off, stops a bunch of runners/chasers, or I can get 4-5 people inside it. The problem occurs when I do get a good ultimate off on people, and its perfectly set up for us to destroy them, my teammates are either running away or standing around or bashing on the tank for no good reason.

His ultimate is godlike with good teammates and just gets you killed horribly with bad ones.

But I do suppose this is true of most champs, but I digress.

And @ Squishy, I'm not buying a champ that is banned in ranked games, as I do wish to play Ranked and do well, so learning a champ that I won't be able to use 90% of the time seems like a waste of IP, but thanks though.

You don't seem to understand. Any champ that allows you to carry games singlehandedly (which you requested) will probably be banned in Ranked.

Shaco, Heimer, Xin Zhao, and Taric would probably be at the top of my list right now. Soraka and Janna come in closely after. Any of these champs are quite likely to be banned in Ranked.

Sivir isn't terrible, she just isn't incredibly powerful without a team. Your major asset is being able to push a lane incredibly quickly, harass/support dps and otherwise eat spells while buff hoarding for your team. She lacks a disable in every way and has a short attack range.

Once you get good with the boomerang blade and spell shield you'll do fairly well. Make sure to be ready for teamfights. Keep your W on for them. It's been since open beta that I've tried it, but if you feel like getting fancy in a gimmick game try flash on her.The trick is to port behind your opponent after the return hit of the BB strikes, which will bring the BB back once more for a third strike.

If you're doing ranked, I wouldn't suggest her. She's fun for normals, but lacks the teamfight utility inherent in the other buff-bottable champs

I'm far from an expert (only lev. 17!), but I've been trying TONS of champs to get a feel for them, to figure out who to really focus on.

I just wanted to throw my hat in for Nasus. He's a blast if you want a sturdy DPS melee dude, and from what I've been seeing, he scales up really well in the end-game. He has good early-game laning capability, too, with a vamp scepter. And, he doesn't feel "wtf OP" like some champs are. Just all-around sturdy, hits hard, looks cool, has fun abilities (his Q is a pain to get up to speed), and some utility (whither is good).

Just my $.02, as I saw that as a suggestion a few times in your thread.

There's not actually anything wrong with meleeing minions in-lane in itself, it's just advice given to new players. If you watch a lot of top players lane, you'll see them whittling down other minions while waiting for one to be killable. As long as everything's still getting last-hit, you can melee as much as you want. Make sure you stop attacking things below 40% or so until they're in kill range and there's no problem with getting as much mana as you can.

Not auto-attacking creeps isn't just about last hitting. It keeps you from pushing the lane toward their tower and making you a better target for ganks.

Keeping the creeps close to the middle of the lane, or closer to your tower, but not close enough to activate the tower makes you much harder to gank.